The Information and Data Protection Commissioner’s Office (IDPC) participated in three important international activities, held in Strasbourg and Brussels, organized by the Council of Europe (CoE) and the European Data Protection Board (EDPB).
The 49th plenary meeting of the Consultative Committee of Convention 108 “For the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data” was held in Strasbourg. At this meeting, Commissioner Besnik Dervishi emphasized that after the entry into force of the new law on the protection of personal data, 7 out of 10 by-laws provided for in the law have been adopted. He also underlined that, following the ratification of the revised Convention 108+, the Commissioner’s Office is working on drafting new standard clauses for the protection of personal data, based on the models approved by the Consultative Committee of Convention 108+.
Also in Strasbourg, the Director General for the Right to Information in the Commissioner’s Office, Ms. Elona Hoxhaj, elected as a member of the Access to Information Group of the Council of Europe Convention “On Access to Official Documents” (Convention 205), participated in the 10th meeting of the Group of Experts.
In a special panel of the joint workshop of the Expert Group of the CoE Convention 205 and the Consultative Committee of the CoE Convention 108, on the topic “Transparency and privacy in democratic societies – two sides of the same coin”, Ms. Hoxhaj reported on the topic “Management of information relating to private persons”. She stressed the importance of defining the boundaries between institutional transparency and the protection of personal data in administrative practice. Among other things, the activity also addressed important issues on the balance between the right to access to information and the protection of personal data, as well as on the regulation of access to personal data of individuals cooperating with public authorities.
In Brussels, representatives of the Commissioner’s Office participated in the 111th plenary meeting of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), held online. Discussions at this meeting focused on guidelines on data processing for political advertising, the use of data in the context of generative artificial intelligence and the interaction between the Artificial Intelligence Act and EU data protection legislation. Issues related to the concept of “representative” under Article 68(3) of the GDPR and the audit of profiling techniques in digital markets were also addressed.
